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READ ME

This folder contains replication material for Tavana, Daniel L and York, Erin. “Legislative Cooptation in Authoritarian Regimes: Policy Cooperation in the Kuwait National Assembly” (2024). British Journal of Political Science. 

Please cite the published article when utilizing these files.


## Description of files


# Code files

02_rep_main.R : This r file contains code to generate all data-generated figures and tables in the main text.

03_rep_external.R : This r file contains code to generate Figure 1 in the main text. Note that this requires the separate download of Varieties of Democracy Country-Year dataset, version 11.1 (see instructions below).


# Data files

04_codebook.xlsx : This file contains a codebook describing all provided datasets, including variables and their source information.

df_cooptationdat.rdata : This is an .rdata file that contains the four separate csv files described below loaded into a single workspace. Loading this file will add four datasets to the R working environment: votedf (corresponding to df_kna_rcv.csv), lawdat (corresponding to df_kna_laws.csv), oildat (corresponding to df_kw_oil_monthly.csv), and kw_gdp (corresponding to df_kw_gdp.csv).

df_kna_laws.csv : This dataset contains information on 3,682 laws passed during the 1963-2013 legislative terms in the Kuwait National Assembly (KNA), including information on the subject, type of law, and topic category. Data were originally accessed via the KNA official website (https://search.kna.kw/) and cleaned and coded by authors.

df_kna_rcv.csv : This dataset contains information on individual roll call votes for successful legislation passed by the KNA from 1963 to 2016. These data were collected manually by authors by identifying roll call voting records documented in official legislative session transcripts and coding vote choice at the individual-vote level. For more information on the data collection process, please see the published manuscript.

df_kw_gdp.csv : This dataset contains information on annual GDP and oil rents for Kuwait from 1970 to 2017, obtained via the World Bank.

df_kw_oil_monthly.csv : This dataset contains information on WTI crude oil price at the month-year level from 1963 to 2016, obtained via FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.


## Additional data access

Please note that some of the data used to generate descriptive statistics are proprietary data from the Varieties of Democracy project - specifically, V-Dem Country-Year dataset version 11.1. To access these data, submit a request form via url: https://www.v-dem.net/data/dataset-archive/country-year-v-dem-fullothers-v111/. URLs current as of July 22, 2024. This data file is required to run the code in 04_rep_external.R; all other code files can be run without it.


## Description of analysis

The analysis was conducted using R version 4.3.1.